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Politics: Nigeria faces constitutional crisis

Nigeria’s parliament is scheduled to debate the implications of the prolonged absence of the country’s President Umaru Yar’Adua for health reasons. The head of the rules and business committee in the house of representatives has said that a debate will be scheduled when the lower house convenes after the holiday recess. The house of representatives will focus on the constitutional and security aspects of the president’s continued absence.

Street protests have also been called by the Save Nigeria Group in Abuja, Lagos, Kaduna, Port Harcourt, London, Washington DC and New York to protest the president’s failure to hand over power.

The 58-year-old head of state has been in Saudi Arabia receiving treatment for a serious heart condition since late November and vice president Goodluck Jonathan has been overseeing government business in his absence.

The Nigerian Bar Association has now filed a lawsuit calling for the formal transfer of presidential power to the vice president amid fears of a power vacuum.

In addition human rights lawyer Femi Falana has called for the annulment of all decisions taken by the cabinet in Yar’Adua’s absence. These include the recent appointment of a new chief justice, Aloysius Kastina-Alu, who was sworn in by his predecessor, Idris Legbo Kutigi, rather than by the president himself as is the norm. Falana is also representing a group of opposition politicians who claim that the president’s signature on a recent supplementary budget was forged and are seeking an investigation.

The crisis comes amid threats by militant groups in the oil-rich Niger Delta to review a fragile ceasefire agreement in the area and continuing unease following the failed attempt by a young Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, to blow up a US aircraft travelling from Amsterdam to Detroit on 25 December.

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